'Oh-come-I'm treating Gerald like one of the family.'
'It's one of the happiest nights of my life.'
'You're just the kind of son-in-law I've always wanted. Your father and I have been friendly rivals in business for some time now-though Crofts Ltd are both older and bigger than Birling & Company - and now you've brought us together.'
He means this on a social and economic scale. He is basically more concerned about financial gain for his business rather than the outcome of the marriage. He hopes that the Crofts would be happy to be part of the Birling institution. Crofts Limited has an established reputation because it is older and from an upper-class society, so Mr Birling wants a firm hold upon this renowned name. He wants people to know that Crofts are part of Birling so he can gain more business and profit by taking over Crofts.
'We may look forward to the time when Crofts and Birling are no longer competing but are working together-for lower costs and higher prices.'
Basically Mr Birling wants domination and doesn't really care how he achieves it all at the expense of the workers.
"A man has to look after himself and his family too"
Here Priestly is really showing the audience how awfully selfish Mr. Birling is, this would give an impact on the audience, and they would probably start to go against him for this. He didn’t care at all about Eva’s death and wouldn’t take any blame; instead he justified this by blaming the girl herself. He wasn’t even interested about her death when the Inspector mentioned it.
"Yes, yes. Horrid business. But I don’t understand why you should come here"
Mr. Birling doesn’t even stop for a second to see if he could help in anyway concerning Eva’s death. During Mr. Birling´s speech on how we should look after each other, the doorbell rang, the atmosphere changed dramatically the moment the Inspector entered the scene. The audience might be questioning themselves, who is at the door at such a time. Their views on the family might change when the inspector enters because usually it means bad news or trouble. The family began to wonder who this new inspector was and what was his business there at such a time.
Dramatic irony used well in this play with Mr. Birling´s illusions of the war and the Titanic.
"Germans don’t want war. Nobody wants war except some half-civilized folks in the Balkans. And why? There’s too much at stake these days. Everything to loose and nothing to gain by war"
"The Titanic she sails next week-forty six thousand tons-New York in five days and every luxury-and unsinkable"
Every one of the predictions Birling makes are wrong; the Titanic sank on her maiden voyage, World War one broke out two years after the play was set and the American stock market crashed in 1929, plunging the world into economic chaos. This leads us to regard him as a man of many words but little sense!
This would cause amusement and also show Mr. Birling to be the fool, as Priestley intended. Author Birling is rather pretentious, only his opinion matters, he always knows best.
The first thing we find out about Eva Smith is that she is dead,
"Two hours ago a young woman died in the infirmary she'd been taken there this afternoon because she'd swallowed a lot of strong disinfectant.
Burnt her inside out, of course........ She was in great agony". (Inspector)
This indicates that events that had previously occurred (later discussed in the play) had driven her to take her own life. She must have been very desperate and felt so insignificant; she must have felt like no-one cared about her, she may as well not exist. She must have been through a lot of bad experiences to have such lack of respect for her own life, which appeared to be going nowhere. An overall feeling of Worthlessness leaving her feeling she'd nothing left to live for. The way she ended her life was very painful, to kill herself in such a way shows haw much she didn't care about her own life and she would end it in any possible way.
Although each member of the Birling family and Gerald Croft have had contact with Eva Smith/Daisy Renton during the previous two years, none of them is aware of the others´ involvement in the tragedy until the day of the inspector’s visit. He makes them aware of the part they have played in her tragic end. The characters each react differently to the news and to the degree of responsibility which they should bear.
Mr. Birling was the first person who we were led to believe started off the train of events that ultimately led to the death of Eva Smith.
. At first when the inspector had asked him about Eva he couldn’t remember her until the inspector showed him a photograph of her. He then remembered her and explained about his involvement. Eva had been involved in a dispute over low wages and because she had been one of the ring leaders in the strike, he had dismissed her.
When told of the consequences of his actions, that Eva was out of work for two months and desperate for money, Arthur Birling showed no remorse. He explained that:
"The girl had been causing trouble in the works.
I was quite justified."
After being sacked from Birling´s Eva was out of work for two months but then she got a job as a sales assistant in a clothes shop. It was here where Sheila’s involvement took place. She had been a valued customer at Milwards and used this to her advantage to get Eva dismissed. Sheila had complained about Eva for laughing at her when she tried on a dress. What had perhaps annoyed her even more was that Eva looked better in the dress than she did. Eva was very pretty and Sheila was jealous of her and because of this she "couldn’t be sorry for her".
Unlike her father Sheila felt extremely guilty for having Eva dismissed. As she says "I felt rotten about it at the time and now I feel a whole lot worse". Sheila has been the cause of this further degeneration but the audience feel less critical of her than her father because of her remorse. Whereas Arthur sacked Eva quite heartlessly and never gave her a second thought, Sheila’s action was the result of a bad temper and she regretted it immediately. She seems to mean what she say’s
"It’s the only time I’ve ever done anything like that, and I’ll never, never do it again to anybody."
This is the reaction JB Priestley wanted to get from his audience. He wanted people to feel sympathy and care for each other and take responsibility for their actions.
Gerald was the third person to come under the spotlight. At first he did not admit knowing this girl as Eva Smith but when the Inspector told him she changed her name to Daisy Denton. Gerald feel’s a lot different towards Eva than either Mr Birling or Sheila did as he knew her personally, not as Eva Smith but as Daisy Denton; who in short was his mistress, for a while until it was no longer convenient for him. Gerald first met Daisy in a bar at the theatre. He saw a man harassing her and went to her rescue. He took her for a drink and a meal because he pitied her and he learnt she was desperate and so let her use his friend’s rooms.
Gerald was almost like a saviour to Eva when he first saw her. He said that she 'gave me a glance that was nothing more than a cry for help´. It seems that Gerald really cared for Eva but he didn’t love her as much as he said 'I didn’t feel about her as she felt about me´.
Gerald was fairly honest admitting his part in Eva’s life quite voluntarily. He had good manners and said the right thing but it is hard to decide whether he does mean what he says or that he is simply trying to come across as well as he possibly can.
Gerald seems to be a rather narrow minded old-fashioned person. He would never marry Eva because she was of the wrong class. In a way you could say that he simply used Eva for his own needs. Although he denies this saying, 'I want you to understand that I didn’t install her there to make love to her! However he did make her happy for a few months. He does show signs of guilt, 'She didn’t blame me at all I wish to god she had now. Maybe I would have felt better about it.´ Although Gerald did not love Eva he did have feeling towards her as he stresses to the Inspector, 'I’m rather more upset by this business than I probably appear to be´. The revelation of Gerald’s behaviour and actions towards Eva Smith are still relevant to the message of the play because Gerald was part of Eva’s life, he made her happy for a few months but she felt like she was used and which could have driven her more to suicide. The pain and misery she must have felt when he left her which shows that he was partly responsible for pushing her to the edge.
Mrs Birling’s part in the chain of events was when Eva had no where to so she went to the Brumley Women’s Charity Organisation for help as a last resort. There she is refused help by Mrs. Birling because she didn’t like her attitude. She thinks Eva is lying about her circumstances and also Eva had started out on the wrong foot by trying to hide her real identity by calling herself 'Mrs. Birling´.
Mrs Birling seems to be a hard and cold person with no sensitivity at all and shows no guilt for Eva at all. She was keen to direct the blame away from herself claiming that Eva, 'only had herself to blame´. Throughout the play she patronizes her children for example saying to Sheila, 'You are behaving like a hysterical child tonight´. From the start Mrs Birling seems to be keen to, 'keep up appearances´, in front of the Inspector which makes the audience see her as a rather fake as well as heartless, cold, hard and a dishonest person.
Although she is the chairwoman of a charity that is supposed to help people, her attitude is unfair because she doesn’t help people who genuinely need it. She tells Eva to "go and look for the father of the child. It’s his responsibility". She thinks Eva’s case isn’t a deserving one and that people should sort out their own self-inflicted problems instead of putting the responsibility on others. She is unworried and believes she has done nothing wrong. As she tells the inspector, "I accept no blame for it at all". She has a clear conscience and is convinced of the justice of her position, "I did nothing that I’m ashamed of or that won’t bear investigation" she declares.
The revelation of Mrs. Birling’s character help implicitly convey the message of the play by refusing help for Eva Smith when she needed her help the most. She takes the blame away from herself by blaming Eva herself and even Arthur for starting it all. She never takes responsibility for her own actions and at no point blames herself.
Eric was the last person to see Eva Smith before she was refused help from her mother. He had spent a night with Eva and she had become pregnant with his child. Eric had no stable relationship with Eva as Gerald did. On describing his night with her he said, 'I didn’t even remember it that’s the hellish thing´. Eric also admits to stealing money from his father’s office in order to support Eva. However he was very truthful and admitted straight away that, 'I got it from the office´. The news of what Eric had done was made dramatic by getting Eva pregnant and that his mother refused to give help to Eva who was carrying Eric’s child.
Both Eric and Sheila react to the news of what their actions have helped to cause by firstly admitting what they have done wrong and show that they have understood what they have done and in the future make sure that they won’t do it again.
Before leaving the Inspector explicitly convey the message of the play by saying the fact that if you do not learn your lesson the first time, you will be taught it again and again. He shows that you can't run from your conscience, as the Birlings have find out. Priestley uses the dramatic twist of the Inspector returning at the end of the play to emphasis this point, and makes it more effective by placing it just as the characters are beginning to relax. He shows the consciences of both the characters and the audience.
After the inspector leaves, Priestly keeps the message of responsibility alive in the minds of the audience by reminding them of what they have done and to make sure it does not happen again. He tells them that every human on earth is responsible for each other’s action. The same as them being responsible for Eva Smith’s death.
The aims of Priestley when he wrote this play, I believe, was to make us think, to make us question our own characters and beliefs. He wasted to show us that we can change, and we can decide which views we side with. He wanted us to ask ourselves if we wanted to be a Sheila or a Sybil, an Eric or an Arthur. Or, were we in-between like Gerald. Priestley wanted the audience to learn from the mistakes of the Birlings. I think that Priestley wanted to make a difference; not a world changing difference, but a small difference in the way people think. Then, if you think of every person who coming out of the play gave some money to a beggar in the street, you would see that Priestley did make a difference. It would have changed people’s views on society, however small those changes would be, and so Priestley achieved his aims in writing the play.
